THE NEW YORKER ink in the pressroom. But against that pleasant flow of the wages of sin there had to be set off the loss from the municipal ad ver- tising, which Preston, though a Democrat, diverted to a Repub- lican paper. It took him a long while to clear it out of the Sun- papers, but clear it out he did at last. Any City Hall function- ary who, by force of old habit, sent in an announcement of a tax sale or a notice of an applica- tion for a permit to open a hat- cleaning parlor was fired forth- with, and to the tune of loud creams of indignation. To meet this devastating attack, the whole staff of the two Sunpapers spent half its time in concocting repri- sals. No story against Preston \vas too incredible to be print- ed, and no criticism too trivial or irresponsible. If the black- amoors in the death house at the Baltimore City Jail had signed a round robin accusing him of sending them poison in cornpone, turnip greens, or snuff, it would have gone into type at once. 19 M y o\vn share in this cam- paign of defamation was large and assiduous. In my daily column on the editorial page of the Evening Sun, I accused Preston of each and every article in IllY private catalogue of infamies. Once I even alleged that he was a Sunday- school superintendent-and was amazed to discover that it was true. I had noth- ing against him personally; on the con- trary, I was fond of him, thought he was doing well as Mayor, and often met him amicably at beer parties. But in his character of enemy of Grasty, and hence of the Sunpapers, I was bound by the journalistic code of the time to deal him a lick whenever I could, and this I did every day. On some days, in fact, my whole column was devoted to revil- ing him. \\Thy he never hit back by ac- cusing me of adultery, or, at all events, of fornication, I do riot know, but no doubt it was because he was too busy amassIng and embellishing his case against Grasty. The plain people of Baltimore natu- rally took his side against the Sunpapers. They are always, in fact, against news- papers, and they are always in favor of what reformers call political corrup- tion. They believe that it keeps money in circulation and makes for a spacious p 0 <rAn r ((()nce and for all, Mr. Stotter, I am not the kind of girl who g-oes to Atlantic City in the wintertime!)) . and stitnulating communal life. Thus they cheered Preston every time he ap- peared in public, and especially did they cheer him every time the Sunpapers published fresh allegations that he and his goons, having made off with every- thing movable in the City Hall, were beginning on the slate roof and the doorknobs. This popularity had a powerful effect on the man hiIllself, for he was not with- out the vanity that affiicts all of us. He began to see himself as a great tribune of the people, ordained by God to rescue them from the entrapments of a dis- solute journalism, by libel out of crim. con. More, he began to \vonder if thE' job of Mayor of BaltÍIllore was really large enough for his talents. Wasn't there something grander and juicier ahead? Didn't the Bible itself guaran- tee that a good and faithful servant should have a reward? What if the people of Maryland should decide to draft the man who had saved the people of Baltimore and make him their Gov- ernor and Captain General? V\That if the people of the whole United. . . . But this last wayward thought had to wait until, early in 1912, the Demo- crats decided that Baltimore should be their con ven tion city. Preston, as Mayor, had a large hand in bringing the na- tional committee to that decision. He not only made eloquent representations about the traditional delights of the town, especially in the way of eating and drinking; he also agreed to raise a fund of $100,000 to pay the costs of the show, and made a big contribution to it himself, for he was a man of means. During the spring the wild fancies and surmises that were devouring him be- gan to emerge. One day the Republican paper which got the city advertising sug- gested that he would make a magnifi- cent candidate for the Vice-Presidency, the next day he received hundreds of spontaneous letters and telephone calls from his jobholders, urging him to ac- cept the plain call of his country, and the third day his campaign was in tht' open and throwing out dense clouds of sparks and sIlloke. It soon appeared that he had an understanding with Champ Clark. Clark had already rounded up